Tuesday, August 19, 2014

UK company Supacat's High Mobility Transporter - HMT that was initially designed in late 1990's is now widely accepted as one of the best special purpose military vehicles. The HMT vehicles are now manufactured under license from Lockheed Martin.

HMT has 4x4 and 6x6 variants and a late eddition to the family is the Extenda variant which is convertable from 4x4 to 6x6 and vice versa.

Copyright: SUPACAT (www.supacat.com)

Extenda has an air spring suspension that offers Ride Height Control, which is a nice capability that allows the vehicle's ground clearance to be increased / decreased to adjust for terrain conditions.

Extenda 6x6 has a total length of 7 meters with 2m width. The vehicle has a combat weight of 10.5 tons in 6x6 configuration and it drops to 7.6tons in 4x4.

The vehicle can be configured with a ballistic and mine protection kit as shown below.

The variant of Extenda that is specifically designed for Australian Special Forces is called Special Operations Vehicles Commando or SOV-Cdo as short.

Australia very recently ordered 89 of these vehicles per their JP 2097 Phase 1B project that concentrates on Special Forces C4ISTAR capabilities and mobility which aims at providing a modern fleet of vehicles.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Nexter has been working on a brand new Two-Men Turret based on the Franco-British 40mm Cased Telescoped Weapon System CTWS40.

CTWS uses a rotating breech mechanism and Cased Telescoped Ammunition where the projectile is fully or partly buried inside the propellant.

The Nexter T40 turret is one of the two ongoing projects that use the CTWS40 as the main armament. The other one is Lockheed Martin UK's turret for the Warrior IFV Upgrade Programme / Warrior Capability Sustainment Programme.

Nexter has developed this turret for the French Army's new reconnaissance vehicle project to replace the 6x6 AMX-10RC and ERC-90 Sagaie platforms.

ERC90 Sagaie Reconnaissance Vehicle

T40 is a Two Men Turret with 40mm CTWS as the main armament. The turret structure is constructed from aluminum with add-on steel armor. The turret offers STANAG 4569 Level 4 protection all around that satisfies immunity against 14.5mm heavy machine gun rounds. The turret has a weight of 4.2 tonnes.

From the images it seems that the there isn't a coaxial machine gun rather a 7.62mm machine gun in a Remote Weapon Station (RWS) on the roof.

The commander is located on the left hand side of the turret, whereas the gunner sits to the right of the commander.

The main gun elevation is 45 degrees. I was unable to see a panoramic sight for the commander and this led me to believe that the commander uses the sight in the RWS as the dedicated commander's sight. There are laser warning recievers on four corners.

There is also a situational awareness system consisting of cameras providing all around vision on the sides of the turret. The commander also has a bunch of periscopes around his hatch.